


Release Me (From Tranquility)

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Amputation, Codependency, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Formerly Tranquil Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Implied/Referenced Forced Hysterectomy, Loss of Identity, Mental Health Issues, Morally Ambiguous Character, Naked Cuddling, Obsession, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rite of Tranquility, Self-Discovery, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-03-13 17:59:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18946033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Are you angry?Her mind wonders as she stares at the pale elven man as he steps away from her, fingers sliding off her wrist, a careful and polite smile painted on his face.You’re expected to save the world that can’t even be bothered to stop and ask if you’re okay because they can’t see past the sunburst mark on your forehead.Evelyn turns her gaze to the spiral of green death above, the mark on her hand crackling with pain that sets her nerves on fire, fingers twitching in response even as she keeps her face carefully blank, distant.They’re bringing you to your death, her mind whispers.Don’t you want to live?-Or: anchored together by the mark on her hand two very different people find salvation in each other (and then something more).





	1. Waking Up

_Are you angry?_ Her mind wonders as she stares at the pale elven man as he steps away from her, fingers sliding off her wrist, a careful and polite smile painted on his face.

_You’re expected to save the world that can’t even be bothered to stop and ask if you’re okay because they can’t see past the sunburst mark on your forehead._

Evelyn turns her gaze to the spiral of green death above, the mark on her hand crackling with pain that sets her nerves on fire, fingers twitching in response even as she keeps her face carefully blank, distant.

Introductions are made.

She’s not part of them.

 _Are you afraid?_ Her mind wonders as she takes a step forward, followed by another, snow crunching beneath her boots, magic ghosting at her neck and flaring up around her in a protective barrier when demons explode out of thick green and black ooze in a warbled cry that makes the hair on her arms rise in response. _How long has it been since you felt anything at all? Ten years? Eleven? Do you even understand what you’re feeling?_

Evelyn watches the way Solas twirls his staff with an eerie sort of grace, bare feet against the ice as more crackles and explodes out in jagged death.

 _They’re bringing you to your death,_ her mind whispers. _Don’t you want to live?_

-

The world is burning.

Evelyn stares up a the ceiling of the small cabin she’d woken up in, arms spread out beside her, distantly aware of voices outside, the crackle of green that flickers and flares on her bare palm, dancing up and over dark walls.

Her very skin hurts, a constant ache of pins and needles that won’t go away, prickling too loud and too sharp on senses that had been dulled to ignore pain for years.

The first thing she’d done when waking up had been to strip away the strange too-tight leather pants and shirt she’d been left to sleep in, the cold settling strange on her body that feels too warm and too aware, senses going high-wire, nipples hard on her chest, a strange sort of throbbing warmth between her legs for reasons she doesn’t understand.

She’d been sixteen when she was made Tranquil, she was twenty-six now, ten years spent in trapped inside her mind, comprehending but unable to react to the happenings around her.

Tranquil.

Her mind is rattling, her skin is burning and there’s a dark yawning abyss inside of her, threatening to swallow her up as she tries desperately to catch up with ten years of feelings and memories that suddenly _matter._

“It hurts to breathe,” she informs the silence of the cabin, tasting iron on her tongue.

-

Evelyn Trevelyan is the third child among a gathering of six and she’s got two older brothers, one younger and two little twin sisters who whoop and holler as they careen down the hallways in pursuit of each other.

Maxwell sighs somewhere beside her and Evelyn’s mouth twitches as he jogs up beside her, clearly the designated watcher of the day judging by the exasperation painted clear on his face.

“I have a sudden and violent sympathy for Robert,” he informs her as she offers him a bite of the red apple she was working her way through and he doesn’t hesitate to sink his teeth into it. “Maybe I should to the easy thing to – becoming a Templar can’t be all that bad, right?” he says around it, wiping at some of the fruit juice dripping down his chin and squinting down the hall and out the open back door where their little siblings can just be seen.

It’s a joke – Maxwell had made his opinion on the Templar Order very clear and it was a sore-spot between him and Robert that had grown with his abrupt leaving and refusal to write more than once every other month, letters addressed solely to their parents with little regard for any of his five siblings.

“Oh no,” Evelyn denies immediately. “If you leave that means I have to watch over them. _On my own._ ”

He pauses.

“Father would never let me hear the end of it.”

“ _I_ would never let you hear the end of it,” Evelyn snorts, elbowing him hard in the ribs. “You have to stick around for a year at least – give me a bit of time for my first book to some traction.” 

“Have you told them yet?” Maxwell asks curiously as they make their way down the hallway. “Last thing I heard they were still discussing potential suitors.”

“As if,” Evelyn denies immediately, taking a bite and then handing over the last bit to a pair of eyes that had been looking at her just a tad too intently. “They’d try to make me stop and I’m already making good money from it. At the end of the year I’ll have enough to move away from here, get my own place.”

Maxwell gives her a warm look and Evelyn ducks her head, moving her gaze to the trio of squabbling children outside.

-

Two months later she finds herself on a cart towards the Ostagar Circle, her palm red where Maxwell had dug in his nails, trying desperately to hold onto her even among the sea of heavy plated men boxing her in, hard-eyed and suspicious.

 _“Fucking- Eve! Eve – I’m going to become a fucking Templar and I’m going to find you, alright?”_ He’d shouted as they finally pulled her free from him. _“So just wait for me!”_

Evelyn remembers calling his name and she remembers the way a gloved hand slapped across her face once she was out of sight from him, her cheek still marred where metal had dug deep in lines of deep red that split and bled down her cheek.

They had laughed at her as she stumbled back determination fierce in her eyes.

 _“That’s a pretty look on you,”_ they tell her. _“It’s too bad it won’t last past this trip.”_

-

“Excuse me,” Solas says mildly but with a look in his eyes that sends a shiver down her spine as she looks upon him. “I don’t think I quite heard you correctly.”

“It would be for her own safety,” Leliana says smoothly as Evelyn stands somewhere in the middle of it all in the fancy new leathers that makes her wants to claw the skin off her body. “She’s the Herald and the only one capable of closing the Breach but she’s also Tranquil. Whoever caused the explosion of the Conclave could ask her to walk right out of the camp and she wouldn’t pause to question it.”

“It’s an easy enough question,” the Commander says with some impatience as Evelyn turns her eyes from the Apostate to the Templar. “Can you or can you not do it?”

Evelyn glances towards Cassandra, finding the stern woman with her mouth in a flat line of dislike but making no move to protest it.

Notably, the Ambassador hadn’t even been invited to the room to hear it being asked.

“You’re asking me to make a slave out of an innocent woman,” Solas says with some sharpness and for all that he’s dressed in loose tunic and pants, his feet bare, there’s a quiet sort of pride to him that makes it very clear that he’s not to be trifled with. “Is it not enough that she’s already been robbed of her free will _once?_ You would have me do it again, tying her to a Templar, one from the very Order responsible for her state in the first place.” He doesn’t sound very impressed.

To Evelyn’s internal delight this brings a splotchy sort of colour to Cullen’s pale cheeks

“ _Former_ Templar,” the Commander presses tightly.

Solas offers no comment to it but the look in his eyes says more than his silence. “I cannot and will not abide to this request,” he says somewhat stiffly as he rolls his shoulders back. “If you’re worried about her I will take her under my wing. She can sleep in my cabin and between myself, the Seeker and the dwarf I’m sure we’ll manage to keep any untoward from stealing her away in the middle of the night until you find a better solution.”

The Commander opens his mouth but Leliana halts him with a raised hand, a contemplative look in her eyes as she gazes upon the apostate.

“Very well,” the redhead relents. “She’s your responsibility for now.”

Evelyn watches it all quietly, eyes lingering on the way Solas clasps his hands behind his back, white-knuckled, and sketches a small bow before beckoning her along.

-

Evelyn peers into the cabin – one prison traded for another and now without a place to breathe out, to be alone to sort through the mess of her mind. In her arms is her bedding and on her back her new travelling bag in anticipation of leaving for the Hinterlands in a week’s time.

Solas is standing, one palm against the wood of his desk, peering into the pages of an open book, but he straightens up when she gives a small polite knock and turns towards her, eyes sharp where they settle on her.

“Come inside.” The cabin has been separated – allowing two beds to just cram into the small space on the left side of it and leaving place for a desk, a burning fire and a small table accompanied by two mismatched chairs in the large room. There’s even a wardrobe and Solas is pulling one of them open. “You can put your extra clothing here,” he tells her. “But keep your armour folded by the bench at the end of your bed. You’ve got one, right?” He asks as she kneels down to do as requested.

“Yes,” Evelyn agrees quietly, depositing two shirts and two pants, underwear and bindings into the open drawer before straightening up.

“What about a weapon?” Solas asks, leaning up against the doorframe, a critical eye on her as the folds the leather armour in place, a thing not unlike the Seeker’s, meant to allow her optimal movement while still giving her a chance to survive a hit. Metal had been considered but for all that she was used to hard work the lack of food from being on the run had starved her frame and it would take time for her to build up muscles again.

Tranquil hadn’t been among the top priority to be fed in their small travelling bad. The Tranquil would keep going and going until their bodies physically couldn’t keep up and then they would die because they were too far gone to waste resources on.

“Not yet,” Evelyn says as she straightens up. “They have been unable to decide on one.”

“You don’t have any opinions?”

“I am not a warrior,” Evelyn says noncommittally, reaching for her sheets and spreading them out, tucking the corners and edges in beneath the straw mattress before placing the pillow in place and giving the covers a shake before smoothing it down.

Solas eyes flicks to the sunburst scar on her forehead, a strange sort of wryness in the curl of his lips.

“No,” he says. “I suppose you aren’t.”

-

Evelyn breaks the nose of a boy several years older than her in defence of her brother, uncaring of the bad odds as her knuckles split beneath the force, a howl ringing out, Maxwell scrambling up, nose crooked, their backs slotting together as they face the ring of teenagers.

“We’ll make you regret that,” they’re told with furious eyes upon them, blood dripping through the fingers of the leader desperately trying to staunch the bleeding.

They’re left sprawled on their back in the mud and dirt, smudged and bruised and the clear losers.

Maxwell coughs dust, nudging her shoulder with his own, fourteen-years-old and all gangly limbs. “Idiot,” he says.

She nudges him right back, thirteen-years-old, one eye swollen entirely shut, coltish and awkward with growth. “Fool.”

They tip their heads to face each other and their grins are wide and matching.

-

The distance between her and Solas in the small cabin is small enough that she can reach out with her hand and touch his arm without problem.

She doesn’t do it but the thought is there as she watches him in the light of the moons wide and large outside, curled up on her side, seeing the way his chest rises and falls with every breath, small puffs of air leaving his mouth.

Solas says he’s a _Dreamer_ , a particular kind of Mage that never would have been allowed inside the walls of the circle.

Apostate.

 _Free,_ her mind whispers in envy.

The last person she’d shared a room with had been Maxwell – before she was considered old enough that it would be _improper._ In the Circle all of them had been given their own rooms, small things, cramped with the bare necessities barely fitting inside.

There’d been a lock on her door.

She had been forbidden from using it.

A single word, an inability to question or deny, Templar grins leery and Mages turning away, pretending not to see.

_You’re asking me to make a slave out of an innocent woman._

_I cannot and will not abide to this request_

-

Evelyn reaches a hand up and Solas meets her half-way, fingers curling around her wrist as he hoists her up and behind him.

She slips one arm around his waist, feeling the strength of his back, the familiar smell of crackling ozone and something animalistic, eyes trailing down to watch Varric settle himself astride his pony, a sturdy thing with dark eyes staring out from the metal fitted to its head, Cassandra tightening the straps of her own and taking the time to erase the evidence of their camping.

Cassandra is outfitted with a pointy shield on her back and Varric needs the space to reload so Evelyn finds most of her time spent at Solas back astride a mottled grey and white mare gifted to them by Horsemaster Dennet after taking out the wolf pack near his farm.

The Seeker rides the dark brown stallion originally meant for the Herald of Andraste, a fierce thing with flaring nostrils that had found a matching companion in the woman.

A distant rumble makes her glance towards the sky, a familiar promise of electricity far above and beyond her that prickles against her skin.

“It’s going to rain,” she informs them.

“We’re travelling to the Storm Coast, Sunshine,” Varric says a bit wryly. “It’s going to be raining a lot.” He didn’t sound particularly happy about it and Evelyn realises he’s traded his normal cloak for a coated one in preparations of it.

“Must you call her that?” Solas asks in clear dislike.

Varric spreads his hands. “If she has any issue with it she’s welcome to take it up with me.”

He looks to her and there’s no cruelty in his gaze, just a sort of appreciation for the irony of it, and she suspects he needles the name for the way the Seeker’s mouth curls up in that disapproving way.

The mark on her arm flares and her fingers twitches, curling on themselves as nerves explodes with pain but she forces herself to not as much as tense, aware of the way she’s pressed up against the elf who is far too watchful.

His gaze darts down and she knows he’s going to push to see it soon – that she won’t be given a choice as his brow dip momentarily.

 -

She’s right.

Evelyn finds her sleeping bag in his tent after dinner and climbs inside after Varric and Cassandra had settled first and second watch between the two of them.

Solas is already inside, waiting, and his eyes fixates on her as she crawls inside, watching her quietly as she shrugs out of the thick leather vest and places it aside, boots being undone and socks pulled off.

Normally he would politely turn his back to her but this time he reaches out, stilling her. “I wish to take a look at the mark,” he says in that low polite murmur and she carefully slips out of her shirt, leaving her in only her breast bindings, extending her arm out to be caught in the gentle grip of long elegant fingers, the soft pads brushing against her skin.

“It has been spreading.” Not once does his eyes dip where they shouldn’t and he leans forward only to study the dark and green claw-like spread up to her elbow, twisting and wrapping, pulsing with violence and pain that mixes and matches with the pins and needles beneath her skin. “Does it hurt?” he asks her, brow dipping, blue eyes rising to meet her own.

Evelyn cannot say why she doesn’t tell the people around her that, somehow, the mark on her wrist had unmade the Rite of Tranquillity, leaving her simultaneously less and more of what she’d been.

Perhaps if she didn’t know just what the Commander of the Inquisition forces had once been capable of, had witnessed his obsession with Surana, had heard the rumours of his service under Meredith who had made Kirkwall into a place of whispered horror. 

 _Do you trust these people?_ Her mind wonders. _What would they do if they knew? Everyone knows that the Tranquil are Mages without control of their powers. Dangerous._

A heartbeat.

 _Would they make an attempt at a second Rite?_  

“No,” she lies.

Because Tranquil does not feel pain and that's what she has to remain if she wishes to have a chance of making it out of this _free._

“Would if hurt if you weren’t Tranquil?”

She blinks at the change of phrasing, curling her fingers, feeling the distant hollowness and the wretchedness of the emotions curled up inside of her from ten years of violence on her person.

The echoing realisation even as her body moved to obey, curling listlessly up against grunting bodies, eyes blank and fixed on the ceiling.

**It hurts.**

It surprises her that he’d though to ask.

“Yes,” she agrees and he considers that, smoothing his fingers over her skin, a prickling sort of ache in the wake of it and then – his hands are glowing _green_ , healing magic brushing over her skin, the prickly electricity easing, fingers loosening from their cramp-like state.

She stares at him, eyes lowering when his lifted to meet hers.

“If it hurts like this again or if you notice anything out of sorts with the mark I want you to come to me,” he presses carefully as he draws back, averting his gaze to allow her to change into her sleeping clothes in peace.

-

The Iron Bull is the mercenary assigned as her personal guard and his looming person makes her feel sixteen again, surrounded by men far taller and more dangerous than herself, men who had laughed and leered at the fate that awaited her at the Circle of Magi in Ostagar.

He has a reputation and his jokes and filthy and leering and her neck prickles uncomfortably when he makes his express fondness for redhead known in response to a stingy response from Cassandra, eyebrows wagging in her direction.

She tightens her grip on Solas, disguising the action with a shift to make sure she was sitting more secure behind him.

“Have some respect,” the elven mage snaps at the large qunari. “Just because she’s Tranquil doesn’t mean she isn’t deserving of the same respect as the rest of us.”

“Whoa.” The Iron Bull raises his palms. “Easy there. It’s just a joke.”

Evelyn doesn’t as much as glance at him.

-

Dorian pulls her out of the way and behind him and Evelyn watches the way he twirls his staff, easy and smooth and with sharpness as it cracks down in a flurry of electricity into the face of one guard, the other meeting his end at the blade at the tip of it.

_Time Travel._

Dorian’s palm is warm against her wrist as he pulls her along and she finds herself listening to his mutters as he traces down corridors and into dark cells where water laps high at her knees and they pick up the three that had accompanied her to the throne room and the meeting with the mages.

It had been Solas who ultimately tipped the balance between the decision of Templars and Mages.

 _“I can guide the power of the mark,”_ he’d told them where he stood in the War Room, his hands cradling Evelyn’s. _“But her connection to it, and then mine, it is limited without will and intention to guide it. Boosting the mark in itself is the only way I can see this working with this sort of handicap.”_

A distant whisper of her is thankful for it.

Red eyes and with lyrium wisping around him Solas doesn’t hesitate to reach out and touch her, ignoring the mark in favour of brushing cold fingers over the skin on her face. “I thought I lost you,” he says, just loud enough for her and no-one else to hear, their foreheads pushing together with a shuddering breath before he draws back. 

It’s a strange sort of sentiment to hear for she can still hear Maxwell’s desperate sobbing in her ears, the way he apologises over and over again.

To him, Evelyn Trevelyan had been lost with the sunburst scar on her forehead. There had been no relief in pulling her into his arms for to him she was already gone. 

_I thought I lost you._

-

Seven years after being made Tranquil Maxwell pulls her limp and unresisting body into his arms inside the dusty library that had become her working area and sinks down on the floor, his calloused palms cradling her face, tears dripping down his as he pressed her branded forehead against his own smooth one.

He makes her tell him everything that had happened inside the Circle walls, sobbing and weeping, pleading and digging bruises into her skin as she spoke monotone about the horrors done to her.

 _“I’m sorry,”_ he pleads. _“By the Maker, Eve, I am so sorry.”_

He’s the one who arranges her transfer to the Ostwick Circle after writing home to their parents but he cannot stand to stay and watch what she’s become, fleeing to leave her alone among strangers

-

Evelyn brushes her fingers against Solas, studying his face deep asleep inside their shared tent, back in her own time, before closing her eyes.

-

 _Do you care for these people?_ Her mind wonders as they march towards the Breach high in the sky above them. _You nearly died the first time, are you ready to put your life on the line a second time?_

In front of her Solas is quiet but he doesn’t look worried – merely contemplative.

“Solas?” He startles because it’s rare that she addresses someone by name, his head turning to look back at her. “Do you think I’ll live?” It’s not a very Tranquil question to ask but she’s curious and if worse comes to worse there won’t be a second time to ask anyway.

“No,” he says. “I _know_ you will. I’ll make sure of it.”

Solas is a strange man and Evelyn feels the way he grasps and squeezes her hand, as if to offer comfort despite the fact that it would do nothing to the likes of her.

“Do you believe me?” he asks her.

Evelyn tilts her head up to the Breach, the mark crackling green and jagged between his fingers.

“Yes,” she admits. “You’ve given me no reason to doubt you.” 

-

 _Of course it wouldn’t be that easy,_ Evelyn thinks to herself hours later as she ignores Solas demand for her to stay, ignores all of them as she grabs Dorian’s staff for herself and reaches for that deep bottomless well inside of her – feels magic rise and dance and flare out at her command in a large golden wall that hinders anyone from following.

Catches Solas blue eyes as she turns.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says, hearing the words she wished had been told to her on many occasions, sees his eyes widen as her mouth stretches in a smile just for him. _"Thank you."_

“She’s happy,” the strange boy named Cole tells them. “This is _her choice_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really fascinated by the Rite of Tranquility and what exactly it means to wake up from it - a subject that I occasionally happen upon but really wanted to explore on my own. So this is my take on it. 
> 
> Evelyn really isn't doing well - she's really good at pretending but there's a lot of trauma she has to confront and pushing it away - that won't work in the long run. It's going to be some interesting chapters ahead with the revelation at the end of this first chapter. 
> 
> Artsy-death on tumblr if you want to swing by and say hi there.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	2. Confrontations

Evelyn stares out into the wind and the snow, arm clutched to her chest and a strange sort of pounding in her chest.

 _Are you really going back?_ Her mind wonders as she leans against the sharp edged stones, breath misting, fingers already frozen stiff. _What do you think they’ll do to you now when they know you’ve been lying all this time?_

The mark cracks and spits, the inky spread of it reaching nearly all the way up to her shoulder in the aftermath of Corypheus desperate attempt to claim it for himself, hissing and spitting and furious at her for stealing something he considered his own.

Evelyn breathes out and pushes away from the stone, boots sinking deep into the snow, nearly all the way up to her knee, and her jaw locks tight as she takes another step and then another, the icy wind like pricks of needles against her sensitive skin and she tucks her fingers into her armpits in an attempt to spare them what seemed like an unavoidable fate as the hours ticked by.

Exhaustion drags at her but Evelyn has walked until her feet bled without complaint once and she’ll do it again and again and **_again_** _-_

“Idiot,” she hisses to herself as tears turns to ice on her cheeks. “You’re such a damn _idiot,_ Eve.”

-

Evelyn wakes up with a start, breathing harsh inside her ears and for a moment she's not quite sure where she is as she stares up at the ceiling of a tent much too broad to be the one she shared with Solas, mind trying to slot pieces together even as she pushes her exhausted body up, ignoring the warning signs as her mind swims and she glances around herself.

 _Medical_ , she decides after a long moment, gaze on rolls of gauze and potions waiting to be used.

She’s covered in some five blankets, two of them thick fur pelts, a sixth one having slid down to pool at her lower back when she pushed up and she raises her hands, laying them flat against the covers.

Counts seven instead of ten with some resignation but without surprise, all of them wrapped tight in white. Her little and index finger is missing on her left and her index finger on her right.

The tent flaps open up and Evelyn looks up to meet the brown eyes of Dorian who pauses to see her awake.

“Pointing is going to be a problem in the future,” she greets him, spreading her fingers out between them. “Do you think I can get away with discreetly giving them all the middle-finger?” His mouth twitches beneath that fancy moustache of his but there’s a gamely sort of caution in his gaze as he studies her, or namely, the mark on her forehead.

“I physically passed through the Fade.” She raises her fingers up, pressing them against the mark. “It restored my connection to it. I haven’t been Tranquil in months.”

“But you never told anyone.” Dorian steps forward and Evelyn slides her gaze along with him, watching as he hesitates but sinks down at the edge of the bed after pushing the blankets aside to give space for himself with a brush of his hand against the spotted fur pelt at the top-layer. “I have never looked upon so many surprised looks in my life – it was quite the treat.”

“Was it now?”

Dorian’s eyes are clever and considering as he looks into her own and Evelyn wonders what he sees now when there’d been something less than human staring back at him only days ago.

“Yes,” he answers finally. “You had us all under pretence.”

“I’ve had ten years to practice,” Evelyn says with an attempt at a smile that feels flat and strange on her face and makes Dorian’s mouth dip down.

“Maybe… don’t do that just yet,” the Tevinter Mage cautions. “You’ll send our poor Ambassador into a mild sort of panic.” It’s an attempt at levity that Evelyn doesn’t quite know what to do with and she averts her eyes to the side.

“People are going to have questions, my dear,” Dorian tells her as she flexes the remaining stump of her right index finger. “But-“ She glances up at him. “I came here because of _you,_ ” he tells her with an earnestness that makes her blink at him. “Because of the mark on _your_ hand. If you need me you just have to ask.” He reaches out and Evelyn feels the calloused on his palm as he squeezes her hand.

-

“You lied to us!”

Evelyn considers that, staring into the furious eyes of the Seeker, aware of the gathering of companions around her in the strange impromptu meeting just a stone throw away from the rest of the camp.

 _“All this time,”_ Cassandra says with barely constrained fury. “Do you think us fools?” she demands and Evelyn suspects that only a firm grasp of self-discipline keeps her from lunging the last distance between them.

“I never lied,” Evelyn denies, tipping her head to the side. “You just never thought to ask.”

“That’s a bit unfair, Boss,” the Iron Bull drawls from her left and she flicks her gaze to him. “No one thinks to ask a Tranquil walking out of the Fade if they’ve somehow _magically_ become non-Tranquil.”

“Fair,” Evelyn agrees. “Most people don’t stop to ask us Tranquil anything.”

A beat of awkward silence.

“So what?” Sera demands and Evelyn obligingly turns towards the impish elf. “You’re not-“ She waves towards her forehead, eyes flicking to the sunburst mark on Evelyn’s, as bright and eerie as it’s always been. “You’re all wiggly magic again so, what? That’s good, innit? No more standing around like an idiot during missions.” But despite her words there’s caution in her eyes even so – unsurity at the unknown and Evelyn supposes there’s a leap of faith there in her words.

Sera might be sceptical to all things magic but she was also a self-proclaimed protector of the Little People and Evelyn had been included there until now.

“How do we know she’s not an abomination?” the Commander demands and Evelyn slides her eyes towards him, aware of the way he’s grasping white-knuckled at the pommel of his sword.

“An abomination that chose to risk her life on a gamble to save all of you?” Solas speaks up and something eases inside of her at the sound of his voice. “If she was one she would have kept pretending and turned back when we called for her but she chose to go up there and face Corypheus. It is only by luck that she yet still lives.”

He’s not looking at her, hands clasped behind his back, and Evelyn’s gaze lingers on him for a moment longer before turning back to the Commander, mouth opening-

But her defence comes from a surprising direction.

“You shouldn’t be so surprised, Commander,” Vivienne says and Evelyn stills at the feel of her hand, firm and grounding on her shoulder. “You have a bit of a  _reputation_ in the Circles.” It’s delicately phrased but still makes the man stiffen up. “You had a hard enough time accepting a Tranquil Herald. To have one who’d miraculously restored their connection to the Fade in their survival… I think our dear Herald was right to be cautious.” _With the likes of you around_ , is implied but not voiced.

There wasn’t much more to be said on that because Corypheus had made himself known as the instigator of the explosion of the conclave – there was no longer reason to hold Evelyn under suspicion for it.

The Breach had been closed but they still needed her to close the rifts and she was too central in the Inquisition to sweep under the rug. They had made sure of it under machinations outside her control.

The famed _Herald of Andraste,_ her mind restored in their hour of need – _oh_ , Evelyn had heard the whispers already circling around, had seen the awe in their gazes.

Perhaps she should be angry but Evelyn has horror painted on her skin and mind and she’s known violence and helplessness in ways these people will never come close to.

“There’s still the reason she was made Tranquil in the first place,” the Commander says sharply, eyes burning into hers with an old sort of fear that that grown into anger and hatred for her kin, carefully hidden but so visible during the meetings in the War Room, often tempered by a firm word from the Nightingale herself who had little patience for it.

He thoughts himself a former Templar but it hadn’t been very long at all since he was the shadow of Meredith in Kirkwall and Evelyn had heard the whispers from that Circle.

Kirkwall had had the highest number of suicides, the highest number of Tranquil, and so many of those who escaped had taken leading positions in the revolution following Anders blowing up the Chantry because they were desperate to never see anything like it again.

Evelyn feels the eyes upon her and she meets livid blue for a moment longer.

“What do you want me to say?” she asks him. “Do you want me to offer empty platitudes? To ease your mind and tell you I’m going to be on my best behaviour and fall in line with Templar guards at my back to reassure you _I_ won’t do anything to frighten _you._ ” Her mouth stretches and her eyes glitter as she rocks back on her heels. “You’ve served under Meredith, Commander,” she says. “Did you learn nothing about the Tranquil in her service?”

“This isn’t about Meredith,” Cullen responds stiffly. “This is about you and whether you’re a danger to the Inquisition for-“

“You’ll always consider my kind a danger, Commander,” Evelyn interrupts because it’s been _months_ of having been forced to listen to him, mouth carefully kept shut and icy cold terror crawling down her back. “Your first instinct was to bind me explicitly to yourself to make sure you were in control of my actions. I don’t think you’re the right person to serve as _judge._ ”

Blotchy red is spreading across his cheeks. “That was-“

“Quiet,” Leliana’s voice, sharp yet smooth voice silences him. “Trevelyan is right.” Her cool gaze stills Cullen in place and jerks stiffly aside. “The reason she was made Tranquil does not matter.” Evelyn strongly suspects that if the woman didn’t know already she would make it her task to find out. “What matters is that she stayed when she could have left.” And she wouldn't find _anything._

-

Evelyn gives up on sleep half-way through the night and slips out of the large medical tent, trudging across the snow to the tent that whispers of Solas familiar signature a little bit away, turned towards the snowy stretch of emptiness to give him some semblance of privacy.

She sinks down to her knees outside, arms wrapped around her chest, not quite sure what she sought by coming to him but-

“Solas?”

There’s a moment of silence followed by a rustle, a shift of movement and then one of the flaps opening up to allow her inside and Evelyn accepts it, shivering as cold was traded for warmth before relaxing into the familiar heat of his magic gently filling up the space.

She wiggles out of her boots and knocks the snow off them before putting them aside and closes the tent behind her as she breathes in.

“Why are you here?”

Evelyn looks to the elven man has busied his hands by rummaging through his bag, half-turned away from her, a tension to his back that is only visible to her because of the countless hours she’d spent in his company.

He’s already down to a soft undershirt, ready for sleep, but he stills fills up the space in a way that she isn’t sure she’d be able to describe if asked to put it into words.

“I wanted to apologize,” she tells him and he stills before straightening up and turning towards her. “I did you an injustice by not telling you when you went out of your way to keep me safe.” She tucks in her feet, on her knees, and then bows down low enough to touch her forehead to the floor. “I am sorry.”

Evelyn catches the sharp inhalation above her but she forces herself not to look up, pausing when long fingers reached out to brush at her red hair with a slight tremble.

“Don’t bow to me,” Solas says, something unfathomable in his voice. “Herald-“

“Evelyn,” she corrects him as she obligingly straightens up. “You defended me when I didn’t have a voice to do it, Solas. That is more than anyone has ever done for me before. You have more than earned the right to my name.”

There isn’t much he can say to that. _Anyone would have done it -_ empty platitudes because they’d both seen that they wouldn’t.

“I – haven’t had the chance to look at your hand since you woke up,” Solas ventures after a long look. “You mentioned that you were able to open a portal of sorts?”

This is more familiar territory and Evelyn allows the change of conversation, reaching to undo her cloak, letting it pool behind her. It takes a bit of wiggling to get the tight pelt-like shirt below it off her but she breathes out when she’s finally free of it, pulling the shirt below if off without much prompting to leave her in her breastband.

The mark is dark and jagged, curling claw-like around her bicep, and Solas hisses sharply through his teeth at the sight of it, reaching gently to cradle in in the palm of his hand, fingers brushing over her skin as he turned her arm, studying the crawling violence of the mark.

“Whatever Corypheus did to it,” Evelyn murmurs as her skin warms strangely beneath his touch, a curl of _something_ low in her gut in response, “allowed me to open up a rift that pulled the demons back and through but I don't think I'll be able to do it often."

Cooling healing magic glows up and she closes her eyes as the needle sharp pain fades to match the familiar pins and needle sensation crawling beneath the rest of her skin, shoulders slowly relaxing.

It has been months and it has become easier to ignore but it’s also exhausting to constantly be on edge, everything amplified, the cold air stinging her lungs like shards of glass.

“Thank you,” she says again and Solas’s grip tightens momentarily before he slowly relinquishes his hold on her and notably the spread of the mark is not as high up her arm anymore “I suspect,” she says. “That I would be dead had you not been here to assist me with it.”

“Does it bother you?” Solas asks with a strange look in his eyes, studying her. “If it wasn’t for the mark on your hand-“

“I would still be Tranquil,” Evelyn reminds him. “I am still…” A pause as she flexes her hand, looking at the stumps from her index and little finger.

“Still?” Solas prompts.

She raises her head. “I was Tranquil for ten years, Solas. Emotions are still… I struggle,” she admits finally. “Sometimes I am not sure what I am feeling but the mark… I am grateful for it,” she tells him, stroking two fingers down a jagged line. “Without it I don’t know where I’d been.”

_Grunts, filthy whispers in her ear and hands stroking down the scar on her lower hip where-_

Evelyn curls her hand shut.

“I am grateful,” she repeats because she _is._

And she knows exactly where she’d be without it.

-

Solas allows her to stay in his tent that night after a bit of shuffling to make space in the single bedroll – Evelyn halfway under her cloak because the tent was warm enough that it didn’t matter much anyway.

But it does mean that she’s close enough that she can feel the press of his back against hers, his warmth seeping through and into her, a feeling that soothes the pins and needles beneath her skin and makes something heat between her legs while thrumming a strange sort of restlessness through her that makes it hard to relax.

She ends up rolling onto her back, listening to the puffs of his breath as he breathes out, a rhythmic thing that eases something in her heavy mind.

Evelyn presses a palm against her chest, feels the wet _thu-thump thu-thump_ of her heart and the hum of her magic coiling through her, alive and waiting to be used, _craving_ to be used now that she’d cared to reach for it once.

 _Again,_ it begs. _More, more, use me, no-one can ever trap us again now that we’re together again-_

It’s a promise, deep and seeping and overwhelming, coiling around her like the constricting force of a snake with a deep hissed promise.

She closes her eyes and lets the Fade pull her down and under with a rough exhalation.

-

_Inquisitor._

Evelyn wants to laugh and laugh and **laugh** _-_

_-_

Dorian’s staff is a comfort on her back, relinquished to her with a wink, and Evelyn hoists herself up on the dragon’s head, hand already curling around her knife to stab down hard where Cassandra’s sword had already dug in once – straining as she pulls down the skin, splitting it apart with a rough push.

Fishing for a trio of vials she dips them down and lets them fill up in the crease, corking them shut and slipping them into her pouch while keeping half-an-eye on the Iron Bull’s crooning happiness, eye practically sparkling, Sera cackling on his shoulders, one hand grasping at his horn – the other waving wildly through the air.

Cassandra looks long fed-up with them not far away, seated on a stone, hair still dripping from the water she’d poured over it, the sun hard and warm above them. Varric is on the ground beside her, head tipped back and charcoal pencil moving quickly over the page.

Evelyn catches the Seeker’s curious glance down at it, the little dip of colour on her cheeks before she very deliberately turns away.

She slips the last vial into her pack, wondering at the strange buzz at the back of her mind.

-

“Sometimes it’s like I’m looking at the world through a glass window,” Evelyn tells Solas, watching the way he carefully traces the brush over the walls in an intricate thing that she would never be able to recreate. “The emotions are there but…” She shrugs, eyes large and empty in her pale face as he turns to glance at her. “I think most people feel _something_ when they kill a dragon.”

The Iron Bull had certainly been happy enough that he’d made a very stark exclamation that had coloured the Seeker’s cheeks when Sera had demanded the translation for it.

“Do you think you’re blocking them out?” Solas inquires. “Ten years is a long time to feel nothing – the transition must have been jarring.” He dips his brush into white, swirls it with a dip of green and traces a sharp arc.

She’s sprawled out on her back on his desk, his things shifted into a pile balanced on his chair, something that had been witnessed with slight exasperation and then something Evelyn hesitates to place.

“You’ve gone from being considered little more than a mindless tool,” Solas says crassly, “to the leader of the Inquisition forces. I would be surprised if you didn’t feel a bit out of sorts about it.”

Evelyn tilts her head.

“You are angry,” she observes.

“Frustrated, perhaps,” he corrects. “Are you not?” he asks her, blue eyes sharp as they focus on her.

She mulls it over, observing him quietly as he works, finding her gaze trailing over the tips of his ears to the line of his neck, observing the way his fingers have settled against the handle of the brush, an elegant tool in his grasp.

“I think,” she says after a long moment. “I think I am.” It’s said with a quiet sort of revelation, meant for their ears only.

-

Evelyn stares at Maxwell and Maxwell stares back, sweaty and wild eyed, his red hair oily and skin streaked with soot.

“Eve,” he whispers, his arms caught and held by the guards at the entrance to the War Room, more than one pair of her companions having reached for or even half-drawn their chosen weapon, electricity dancing down Vivienne’s wrist. “Eve-“ It’s a desperate thing, a prayer, disbelief in his gaze as he drinks her in.

“Max,” she murmurs and he jerks at the sound of her voice, eyes locking onto the lift of a smile on her face with a hunger that’s feverish with mania.

“You know this man?” Cassandra asks cautiously.

“He’s my brother,” Evelyn tells her and someone must have made a sign for only moments later he stumbles forward, broad arms circling around her to draw her desperately against his chest, his knees hitting the floor and taking her with him, fingers digging into her spine as he practically curls around her.

“I thought I lost you,” he chokes out desperately. “I thought – I thought I’d never see you again.”

He’s crying, Evelyn realises as she lifts a hand up, carding through his sweaty hair as he presses his face into her shoulder, hiccupping with an overflow of emotions as he clings desperately to her.

-

Solas finds her late that evening where she sits on the wall, looking out over the snowy mountains – the guards having respectfully stationed themselves at the far ends instead of moving back and forth go give her a sense of privacy.

“You don’t look very happy to have him here,” the elven man observes as he takes a seat beside her. “He’s family, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Evelyn agrees. “But it’s been nearly ten years since I knew him as Evelyn Trevelyan. Last time we met I was just a Tranquil with his sister’s face.”

Hollow cheeked and recounting horrors with a blank face and the same tone of voice she used to recite numbers for the younglings at the tower.

Solas hums and she glances at him, sees the catch of moonlight in the blue of his eyes, feels that strange throb between her legs and a shiver of something inside her chest.

“It’s strange,” she tells him. “Maxwell used to be my world. We did everything together – frequently getting into fights and mischief to our parents exasperation.” She looks at her hand, at the green shine. “He’s only a year older than me – our oldest brother Robert some five years older than Max and then our little siblings some seven years younger then me. We were in the middle and close because of it.” A tilt of her head. “We used to be mistaken for twins.”

Both red haired and grey eyed, the same sort of lanky build and matching dimpling cheeks.

Nowadays she didn’t quite look like anything – her hair had been shorn short, somewhere down the line, and it was growing out in a wavy mess different from the shoulder-length pin-straight hair on her brother’s head. He’d filled out while she’d grown thin and one of her cheeks had been marred by three deep gouges from the Templars that took her.

Not to mention the ones on her body.

“It’s strange,” she repeats. “Because I feel more when I look at you than when I look at my own brother.”

A leg that had been absently dangling in the wind stills but Evelyn doesn’t turn her head to look at him, squinting out over the snowy landscape.

“I don’t feel much of anything these days,” other than the pain, “but when I look at you…”

Evelyn presses her palm up against her chest, feels the beating of her heart, and she gives him a helpless sort of look that makes him still where he’s watching her with an eerie sort of attention.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to un-make the Tranquil,” Evelyn says, dropping her hand. “I don’t think we come back quite right.”

“Evelyn.” The sound of her name does something strange to her and she angles her head to look at him as he rises only to sink down to his knees beside her. “I think you are a remarkable woman,” Solas tells her and she makes no move to protest when he reaches for her hands, squeezing them in his own. “What was done to you was unjust but it didn’t make you lesser. It’s going to take time to find your equilibrium but you’re doing your best with what you have.”  

“Am I?” she asks him. “Because most days I feel more like an actor than an actual participant.”

“You undersell yourself,” Solas says firmly and there’s something in his eyes that makes her want to believe him.

“Are we friends?” she asks him, curious.

The question makes him pause, the mark crackling against his palm, and she holds his gaze patiently, allowing him to search for  _something_  in her eyes and he must have found what he was looking for because his grasp firms around hers.

“Yes,” he tells her with a strange sort of look. “I like to think we are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to up the chapter count because this is not going to stop at three chapters. I think maybe four? Five? Depends a bit. I'm still hmm-ing about a thing but I'm pretty decided about another so 4 chapters for sure. I didn't fully take into account how locked up Evelyn was and with me just not wanting to rush it...
> 
> Yah, we'll see how it goes. Some things you can't hurry and there are so many damn characters in the Inquisition - I find myself having to be very mindful about who takes center-piece and why. Everything has its time and place.
> 
> Aaaah. It's interesting to write anyway and I find myself fond of Evelyn. 
> 
> I really hope I'm getting Solas across correctly. It's interesting to consider him here and I want to be truthful to his character while writing a Trevelyan romance.
> 
> I'm artsy-death on tumblr if you want to come say hi~
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


	3. Truth of the Matter

“That is not your decision to make.”

Evelyn senses the change in her brother before his face shifts to match it, that stirring of deep and aching mania that had swallowed something inside of him, had made him different from the gangly youth she had known before Tranquillity became her fate as the doors closed behind her to the Circle tower.

“Eve-“

“That,” she repeats, firmer, eyes meeting, “is _not_ your decision to make, brother.”

She sees his chest expand once, twice, expression twisting up, indecision and that familiar stubbornness that had gotten him into more trouble than out of it, had made him sacrifice years of his life in a desperate sort of hunt for her only for it to end in disappointment and loss.

“You are not the Inquisitor,” Leliana agrees mildly where she’s leaning against the table, hands curled around the edges, head tilted to cast half of her face in shadow.

“I understand you might have concerns, Knight-Captain,” Josephine slides in smoothly when Maxwell turns, intent on the (perceived as) easier target of his ire. “But your sister is the leader of the Inquisition and such a rank is not worn lightly. What she says goes unless voted down by all three of her advisors. If you have concerns I am, of course, here to hear it out but directly opposing her will-“

“Is not within your right,” Cullen says when Josephine leaves an opening for one of them to take the less diplomatic route to drive the message home, his words blunt but firm and not without sympathy for all that he hardens his face, mouth set.

Evelyn watches her brother take a step, lips lifting, as if to burst into laughter even as eyes darken with something far more complicated, the combination eerie.

And then he bows and Evelyn watches him leave the room, armour rustling with his steps, a stiff sort of pride in his back and shoulders.

Evelyn breathes out and turns back to the map, hand pressing briefly against her chest where her heart aches.

-

“Do you think my brother thinks me lesser, Varric?” she asks, watching the anger slide off Cassandra in favour of something that might close to awe as she’s introduced to a visibly amused Hawke. It's disguised but easy to pick out after months watching the stern faced woman reveal moments of something softer beneath.

The dwarf, still a bit harried from scrambling away from the furious Seeker, is combing fingers through his golden hair, leather cord caught between his teeth, and she allows him the moment to consider her questions as he finishes tying it back.

“I’m not the person to answer that, Sunshine,” he tells her finally. “I can only speak for myself.”

She slants him a look. “Do you think me lesser?”

“No exactly,” Varric answers with some consideration. “I think that someone who has spent ten years as a Tranquil is going to have some trouble landing on their feet again, so to say.” He shrugs. “We saw the Rite being reversed once, you know?” he tells her as she pauses, head tilting. “He came to screaming and begging for death. It’s why I never suspected anything. Devastated Anders for weeks afterwards.” He rubs at his neck, sounding tired all of a sudden.

Evelyn thinks of glass shards in her lungs, the too hard beating of her heart, the pins and needles beneath her skin and a world that is too much and too little at the same time.

“I see,” she says.

-

“He wants to ease your hurt but he’s doing it all wrong,” Cole tells her where he appears on the edge of her bed, hat tipped down over his eyes and head turned away in consideration as she trades heavy Inquisitor armour for a cotton shirt and pants.

“He feels guilty.”

“Among many things,” Cole agrees.

“It’s in the past.” Evelyn drops down on the bed beside him, hands reaching to fold together automatically before she catches herself and very deliberately flattens them against her thighs instead. “I keep telling him but he won’t listen.”

“He should listen,” Cole says sagely. “You’re telling him the truth and if he listened then he would know that and he wouldn’t be all knotted up like a ball of yarn.”

“Varric been telling you tales about Merrill?” Evelyn asks after a brief pause at the comparison.

“I never get lost,” Cole says, hat tipping as he looks at her with large eyes. “But if I did I think I’d like a ball of yarn, too.”

“I think that if you ask Varric would surely give you one, even if you don’t get lost.”

Cole considers that. “Tomorrow,” he agrees. “You are sad.”

“Is that so?” Evelyn asks, eyebrow raising.

“Yes,” Cole agrees firmly. “Would you like me to rest my head on your shoulder?”

“Would it help?” she asks him curiously.

“ _A head against a shoulder, a thrill of a voice like Nightingale, laughter and warmth and dried tears in front of a dying fire,”_ he echoes to her in a ghostly whisper. “I don’t know,” he answers more earnestly. “But it will not make it worse.”

She allows him to rest his head against his shoulders.

She’s not sure if she feels better for it but he’s truthful in that it doesn’t make her feel worse.

-

“Do you think it’ll make him less than what he is to make him human?” Evelyn asks Solas after slowing her horse down to walk beside his. “Or would it make him more?”

He’s astride the mottled grey and white mare he’d received from Dennet but Evelyn has been granted a horse of her own – a sooty looking thing with prickling ears, eager for attention and treats with a nose that bumped into her whenever she got within the sight of her.

She’d named her Bumper and Sera had been mildly impressed by the sheer unimaginativeness of it.

“Cole will remain Cole no matter your decision,” Solas says, hood pulled up to protect him against the sun shining hard from above them. “Life is a road of endless choices but they don’t make us less than ourselves for to remain the same is to be stagnant.”

“Not even when the choice is taken from us?” Evelyn asks with a crease of her brow.

Solas hums. “You fear you are doing to him what the Templars did to you.”

It’s not a question.

Evelyn tilts her head up, tucked firmly beneath a hood of her own, squinting against the brightness of the sun.

“The decision of Tranquillity was made without my consent,” she says after a moment. “They dragged me through the doors of the tower and immediately down to kneel in front of the Knight-Commander. There was never a question of choice – it was made for me the moment my magic was discovered. Is it really so different to make decisions on Cole’s behalf, because of his very nature, from a position of power?”

Silence, the lulling steps of their horses hooves accompanied by the conversation between Sera who was looking rather owlishly up at a rather amused looked Vivienne.

“You have been thinking about this a lot.” There’s approval in his voice and she hums noncommittally because she’d given Cole’s situation as much thought she gave most things involving others – to the best of her ability. “Arguably it can be viewed that way but Cole requested your help in this decision because he respects you and because a part of him is unsure, perhaps even afraid, even if he isn’t consciously aware of it.”

“So he looked to me,” Evelyn muses, "because I come perhaps closest to an understanding of what it means to change so fundamentally.”

Solas inclines his head. “Indeed.”

“If he is afraid… Then maybe the right decision is simply to talk to him once we’re back at Skyhold. A month should give him plenty of time to give it some thought of his own.” Hearing a compromise that didn’t jar at something inside of her makes her shoulders ease down from a tension she hadn’t even been aware of.

Solas eyes lingers on her, something softening in the lines of his face before he turns to look back at the winding roads.

“You have my apologies for prying,” Solas ventures some minutes later. "But I was under the impression that the Rite of Tranquillity was something that fated those gifted with magic out of their control or those who rebelled against the Circles but you implied that you barely ventured through its doors before it was forced upon you.”

Evelyn traces back her words and hums. “I did,” she says. “And I spoke the truth.”

“Why?” Solas presses. “Did they ever gave you a reason?”

She gives him a long look and he meets her gaze calmly, with that little dip of his brow that he got when he was trying to figure out an answer to a problem in front of him.

Solas always sought to understand- that was a fundamental she had come to understand of him.

“When I was sixteen my oldest brother Robert returned home to visit our parents,” Evelyn tells him as she turns her gaze forward, focusing a bit absently at the broad shoulders of their Seeker. “He’d always been obsessed with the Templar Order, joining up the moment he was old enough to do so.”

She remembers him before he left them – seventeen and determined as the news was announced, his once long wavy brown hair shorn short and a tall unfamiliar woman beside him in armour.

“It was a sore spot for Maxwell,” she tells him. “He was very free-spirited when we were younger and there were few fates he considered as horrible as being locked up for the entirety of one’s life. He considered the Circles barbaric.”

She smoothed a hand absently down some of the dusty strands of Bumper’s mane.

“Robert returned home a stranger – arrogant, proud and with little patience or care for any of his siblings. Maxwell didn’t respond well to it and even as I tried to distract him I could see that anger growing and growing and growing until it simply tipped over.” She twirls the mane absently around her middle-finger. “Maxwell often got into fights with the children in our village. Wherever he went I went and I knew his tells well but he still managed to dodge me one evening when I was being addressed by Father in his study.”

Her brow dips as she remembers it.

“I don’t… remember fully what happened,” she adds a bit belatedly as she looks up at him, finding blue eyes watching her intently. “Robert had Maxwell on the ground and his sword was raised and I just…” She shrugs because whatever she’d felt at that moment was a distant thing.

“Magic,” Solas says delicately, “is often activated during moments of high-emotional distress.”

“Yes,” Evelyn agrees. “And my magic lashed out to push him back, hard enough that I cracked his head against the wall and broke seven of his ribs.”

“So he told his commanders,” Solas deduces with a curl his lips.

“No,” Evelyn disagrees. “Maxwell did.”

Solas jerks straight up, back growing stiff and blue eyes flaring with something dangerous as he looks upon her.

“What?” he breathes.

“Robert denied it,” Evelyn tells him plainly. “Refused to have his injuries appear anywhere on record and I think he even resigned in the aftermath of it. But they Smited me and it was really all the evidence they needed.”

The Smite had concaved her lungs, had torn her legs from beneath her and crumbled her to the ground like a doll cut abruptly from its strings, gasping for breath in front of her family.

She remembers vividly her parents turning away, her little siblings watching wide-eyed from behind them, questioning and unable to understand why no-one did anything to help their big sister when the large armoured man hauled her protesting body up, bound and then chained as the world fluctuated strange and distant around her. 

Her brother, he who had been her world, lunging for her hand – desperate to make right even as more Templars drew her back, boxed her in, not even given a chance to say goodbye.  

-

 _“By the Maker, Eve, I am so sorry,”_ Maxwell sobs in the dusty library of Ostagar Circle. _“This is all my fault."_  

-

Evelyn kneels gently down in the aftermath of the ritual circle, feeling the ash beneath her fingers and Solas horror like a painful echo inside of her chest.

Dead bodies are sprawled against the ground, two of them by her hand, lightning peeling the very flesh of their bone.

She pretends not to feel the stares at her back.

_“My friend is in danger.”_

Evelyn closes her eyes. 

_“Please-“_

-

The last thing Evelyn sees before the world explodes in green is Maxwell’s body colliding brokenly against the ground and then she’s falling upwards, gravity stolen and back colliding roughly against a large floating rock, breath torn away from her with a gasp.

Dorian stares at her where he’s sprawled out against a rock of his own, plastered upside down on a wall.

Sera swears somewhere below, stumbling wide-eyed and horrified as her head jerks left and right to look around the enormous expanse of green, the chitter and whispers from demons making her fold her arms around herself defensively.

“What kind of shit-show is this?” The Iron Bull demands where he’s standing upside-down on a rock swirling idly in an arch through the air.

“We’re in the Fade,” Evelyn gasps as she yanks herself off her stone, forcing gravity to comply with her wishes as she scrambles downwards and pushes away to land on her feet with a small stumble, unfamiliar gravity weighing her down.

“I must admit,” Dorian comments wryly as he’s peeling himself from his own rock, “that this is not how I was imagining the day to go.” He lands neatly, head tilting up to watch The Iron Bull who was making a good attempt at pretending he wasn’t deeply unnerved where he floated way above them. “You want a hand?” he asks cheekily, one hand settling on his hip.

Sera flails. “How can you be so calm?” she demands. “This ain’t normal, innit? This is – “ she waves her hand in a broad choppy sort of way that could have meant anything, apparently at loss for words.

“Of all the people to pull into the Fade you chose these two,” Dorian says with faint exasperation, and perhaps some amusement as he reaches with magic to tug at The Iron Bull’s floating rock to the qunari’s visible unease as he hunkers down instinctively. “Solas would have been quite beyond himself and I daresay even our dear Iron Lady would have found the entire trip fascinating.”

“If I ever decide to traipse through the Fade against I’ll make sure to have an all-magic team at my back,” Evelyn tells him as she reaches out and settles a hand on Sera’s shoulder, knowing that the young elf relied on touch in a way she didn’t and not at all surprised when she tucked closer Evelyn instead.

Better an evil you knew than something unknown.

A faint tremble runs through her but Evelyn pushes it away, turning instead to look at Hawke who’s got an injured Loghain half-supported on her shoulder, the Grey Warden limping along with a pained twist of his lips.

The Iron Bull lands with a hard thud, hand already curling around the handle of the broad axe on his back as a woman shrouded in light reveals herself to their group.

-

Choices – Evelyn resents them, her hand curling into the fabric of Hawke’s shirt, hauling her hard back with a shove of magic to boot her right through the gate and out of the Fade with a half-sworn protest on her lips as green swallows her up. 

She looks to Loghain, dark haired and pale faced with a proud hooked nose, something that might be relief in his expression when he looks at her.

“Thank you,” he tells her, his voice rolling and rough. “Hawke – she means more than she thinks and I’m not the only Grey Warden out there with some sense.”

“Who else is there?” Evelyn asks, eyes on the demon above them – an abomination of a thing that pulses and roars, struggling against the barrier she’d thrown in place as she grimaces and tightens it.

“There is a man – in Ferelden. I’ve made him a great injustice and he might not be all that he was but Alistair accompanied the Warden along with the Nightingale against the Blight ten years ago. He’s stronger than he thinks he is and if there’s anyone who knows where he is it is your Spymaster.”

Evelyn studies his gaze before giving him a sharp nod. “I’ll find him,” she promises.

His shoulders eases. “You are very different from what I imagined, Evelyn Trevelyan.” It’s the first time he's adressed her by name and the corner of his mouth ticks up. “It’s not a bad thing,” he assures her. “Rather, I think you’re exactly what the Inquisition needed.”

He straightens out, steadying the grasp of his sword.

“Go,” he tells her. “Before it’s too late.”

A single man against an impossible thing, proud backed and steady in his belief.

“Tell her… Tell her I’m sorry,” he says, something softer in his tone as she reaches for the last golden wall between them. “Tell her I am proud of her.”

Evelyn lets the barrier fall, booted feet taking her up the rocky steps, her body disappearing through the rift as a roar of anger rises high and bloody behind her before being traded for abrupt silence, a world of nothingness, an expanse of something far beyond her, before she tumbles out, strong arms folding around her before she can go head first against the stones.

She stiffens but The Iron Bull eases her down on her feet with surprising care and she straightens out with a breath, eyes sharpening on furious brown before Hawke abruptly looks away from her and Evelyn swallows.

 _One thing at the time,_ she thinks as she rolls her shoulders back and pins the Grey Wardens in place as Cullen hauls himself over the wall, Cassandra brushing their shoulders together, as if to reassure herself that Evelyn was still there, that she hadn’t been lost to the Fade.

“Grey Wardens,” she calls, mark crackling and golden magic pulsing around her right hand to carry and amplify her voice, short hair whipping back in the wind and eyes like steel. “In the name of the Inquisition: relinquish your weapons!”

-

Evelyn stumbles but Solas is there before she collapse to her knees, trembling and overwhelmed but still in full-sight of the forces.

“Just a bit more,” he tells her as his magic soothes the static cadence of her own and she clings to the promise of his words, following him blindly until darkness swallows them up, a small ball of magic blossoming up in the midst as she collapses down.

Something desperate bubbles inside of her chest, trembling and overwhelmed, claws in her heart, iron on her tongue and a mind-numbing sort of terror that she doesn’t understand as her brother’s empty eyes and broken body buries into her mind until it’s all she sees.

“No one can hear you here.” Solas voice is a distant thing, barely registering. “If you want to be on your own I can wait outsi-“ He stills for Evelyn’s hand had shot out, curling with desperation into his shirt, his words twisting like shards of glass inside her heart.

 _“Stay,”_ she gasps, mouth twisting oddly around the word. “Please.”

“If that is what you want,” Solas murmurs gently, his hand settling gently over her own, his fingers calloused, his touch easing the pins and needles beneath her skin as she struggles to center the mess her mind had become, a strange buzz in her ear and the yawning abyss threatening to rise up and swallow her whole.

-

She doesn’t know how long they remain in such a way but she jerks, eyes opening up, dizzy, mind muddled as hands guides her out of her armour, boots and socks already tugged off, her sweaty blood-stained shirt following, her head tilting into the palm that brushes strands away from her face to a shudder.

“How do you do that?” she wonders as she inhales the smell of ozone, that familiar sting of something wild and feral in the depth of his scent.

“Do what?” Solas asks as she clumsily undoes the buttons of her pants before he helps of her out of them, grimacing with a hiss as the fabric drags over a large split of skin in her thigh where a claw had gone deep.

“Make the pain go away,” she says, tongue curling clumsily over the words, exhausted, both physically and mentally.

His eyes flicks up to her in question, a dip in his brow that she feels an inane need to smooth away.

“Everything hurts. All the time,” she tells him, shaking her head and clumsily drawing her left hand away before he can grasp for her wrist. “Not the Mark,” she reassures him. “But-“ Her brow dips. “It’s like pins and needles in my skin, shards of glass in my lungs, a deep and constant _ache._ ” Her mouth twists up. “But you make it go away,” she tacks on, something like wonder dipping into her gaze as she looks to him.

“Why haven’t you told me about this before?” Solas asks and there’s something terrible in the blue of his eyes.

“Varric said he’s saw the Rite of Tranquillity reversed once before,” Evelyn tells him, ignoring his question. “He said the man came to screaming and begging for death.” A wry curl of her lips. “I told you,” she says. “I don’t think you’re supposed to reverse the Tranqui-“

She sucks in a gasp of breath as his palms presses against her cheeks, framing her face, eyes fluttering and her fingers curling around her wrists as the constant pounding of her head eases, the prickling sting of her eyes gone and a soft noise slipping out of her lips before she can catch it.

“Do you think me so cruel that I wouldn’t ease the pain had I known that I could?” Solas demands of her and Evelyn stares at him, breathing glass and tasting iron. “Had I known it _was_?”

“You’re angry-“

“I’m _concerned,_ ” Solas corrects sharply. “Because I thought we were _friends._ ”

Evelyn stares at him, feeling suddenly small and unsure because there’s something in his eyes that she doesn’t know how to fix.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, voice raw. _“Solas-“_

“Be quiet.” She stills, heart twisting up as he slowly withdraws his touch, her hands falling limp at her sides as she does nothing to protest it. “Is it centralized?”

Her mind blanks. “What?”

“If I touch your hand does it only erase the pain in your hand?” he clarifies, voice low as his hand glows green, running over her thigh to seal the wound shut there as she looks at him.

“Yes,” she answers finally.

“Does it help when someone else touches you?” he asks.

“No,” she admits.

“And why,” he ventures carefully, “do you think that is?”

“Because you’re connected to the artefact that caused the mark on my hand,” she tells him in the silence of the tent, watching his back knot up. “And perhaps it interfered somehow when I went from Tranquil to this, allowing it without driving me insane? I do not know. How are you connected? I do not know that either.” Their eyes meet, grey against vulnerable blue. “Solas, I’ve told you once before – I am thankful for this Mark, without it I would have remained Tranquil, forever trapped at the mercy of men who sought to use me.” The implication is stark, the fate of Tranquil known but hushed, his teeth clenching down, and Evelyn reaches out to gently curl her fingers around his hand, wound completely sealed. “I owe you a debt,” she tells him gently.

Silence, nothing but the sound of their breathing, a distant  _thu-thump thu-thump_ inside her chest.

“Do you trust me?” Solas asks.

“I do,” she tells him without hesitation.

“Would you…” A moment of indecision and something in his eyes that she isn't sure how to place. “Would you allow me to ease the pain in your body? For tonight?”

Evelyn looks at him – at this clever elven man with more secrets than most, prideful but also kind, distant but closer than she’d ever allowed anyone since her youth of troubles with Maxwell at her side.

“Yes,” she agrees gently.

He reaches for his shirt and she watches him strip down to his smallclothes, baring a body slim and strong, wiry with strength, and he eases down into his sleeping bag before removing the last clothing, light dimming as she removes her breast binding and then, finally, her own underwear.

A rustle, blanket opening in invitation, and she slips closer, naked, easing over his hips in a straddle to a whoosh of breath as the ache and pain faded from her body the more she eased herself down against him, entwining nude limbs, a bit of shuffling to make sure as much of their bodies were touching as much as physically possible.

She’s taller, her shoulders slightly broader, but he wraps his arms around her and she tucks her head beneath his chin, knees slightly bent, aware of his limp cock between the spread of her legs as she breathes out, a soft noise of relief slipping out of her as the last prickle of pain faded from her body.

For the first time in nearly two years drawing breath doesn’t hurt.

“Thank you,” she whispers thickly as she closes her eyes and breathes in the smell of ozone and wildness, head angled to listen to the soothing cadence of his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been away some three days to Skåne so it's nice to be back home and able to write again, aaah.
> 
> I'm currently leaning towards adding a fifth chapter and expand this to include an intimate scene between them?
> 
> On one hand I kinda like like the growing trust between the two them, and sometimes that is a closeness far more intimate than sex, but I also think it would be good for them? I'm just kinda going hmm atm.
> 
> Ah. We'll see what happens. Feel free to weigh in! It can really go either way as it is. 
> 
> Will probably end up making it a fifth chapter no-matter what because I'm doubtful a single chapter will be enough to tie all of this up.
> 
> A lot of things happened in this chapter and more coming up as we get ever closer to the end.
> 
> Artsy-death on tumblr of you wanna swing by~
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
